Kanye West model incognito at the Balenciaga show at Paris Fashion Week
It took the Paris Fashion Week audience several minutes to realize that they had just seen Kanye West make his very first appearance as a model on the catwalks.< /p>
With his black hoodie pulled up over a Balenciaga baseball cap, there was something familiar about the man in an oversized body armor and baggy denim jeans. leather — the beard, the wavering swagger — and after a few zooms in on their phone videos, the abandoned penny: One of the most influential musicians of his generation had just added catwalk modeling to an eclectic resume that includes 21 Grammys, fashion collections and collaborations from Paris to New York, a longtime guest role in the Kardashian celebrity circus and a near miss in a run for the White House.
Balenciaga has established itself as the most compelling luxury brand to the world by taking the most meaningless and ridiculous elements of fashion week and turning them inside out to say something I Interesting.
Putting a celebrity on the catwalk to get a show noticed is an old trick; putting one of the world's most famous men on his incognito show was, said Balenciaga creative director Demna — who like Ye, like West now prefers to be known, has only one name — a message that people should value individualism, not flatter fame.
In a statement accompanying the show, he said that "individualism in fashion is downgraded to pseudo-trends dictated by a post in a celebrity's stories of the moment... fashion at the best of times shouldn't need a story to sell to someone... let everyone be anyone . , you'll have some catching up to do at Balenciaga. Demna, who said polish and perfection were "pretty old school," rocked Paris fashion week with a gritty, dystopian aesthetic.
The parade invitation was beaten-up wallet, bulging car yours, coins and receipts as if returning from a lost and found depot, with an ID card - in the name of a longtime Balenciaga employee - and a faded cat snap hidden behind the pocket coin.
The catwalk was a muddy track that splattered black dirt over the clothes on the catwalk and the purses in the front row, accompanied by a rumble of techno gunfire . Inspirational lifestyle moment, it wasn't.
It's fashion for the era of BeReal rather than Instagram. Just as a Chanel show is dazzled with pearls and camellias, Balenciaga's is strewn with real-life treasures: AirPods in the ears, a house key dangling from a ponytail, bags modeled on packages crispies grabbed in one hand. (There were even what looked like babies strapped to some of the models in slings, though these turned out to be dolls.)
Still, Balenciaga is always definitely in fashion. The oversized bomber slump is a streetwear update of the egg and cocoon shapes with which Cristóbal Balenciaga, the house's founder, radicalized Parisian fashion in his day, 70 years ago.
The emphasis on black is not just a nod to dystopia, but to the power of black to emphasize the exaggerated silhouettes that are a Balenciaga trademark from then and now.
You may have another surprise in store for Paris fashion week, with catwalk rumors for her own brand Yeezy, but no announcements yet. been made.
It took the Paris Fashion Week audience several minutes to realize that they had just seen Kanye West make his very first appearance as a model on the catwalks.< /p>
With his black hoodie pulled up over a Balenciaga baseball cap, there was something familiar about the man in an oversized body armor and baggy denim jeans. leather — the beard, the wavering swagger — and after a few zooms in on their phone videos, the abandoned penny: One of the most influential musicians of his generation had just added catwalk modeling to an eclectic resume that includes 21 Grammys, fashion collections and collaborations from Paris to New York, a longtime guest role in the Kardashian celebrity circus and a near miss in a run for the White House.
Balenciaga has established itself as the most compelling luxury brand to the world by taking the most meaningless and ridiculous elements of fashion week and turning them inside out to say something I Interesting.
Putting a celebrity on the catwalk to get a show noticed is an old trick; putting one of the world's most famous men on his incognito show was, said Balenciaga creative director Demna — who like Ye, like West now prefers to be known, has only one name — a message that people should value individualism, not flatter fame.
In a statement accompanying the show, he said that "individualism in fashion is downgraded to pseudo-trends dictated by a post in a celebrity's stories of the moment... fashion at the best of times shouldn't need a story to sell to someone... let everyone be anyone . , you'll have some catching up to do at Balenciaga. Demna, who said polish and perfection were "pretty old school," rocked Paris fashion week with a gritty, dystopian aesthetic.
The parade invitation was beaten-up wallet, bulging car yours, coins and receipts as if returning from a lost and found depot, with an ID card - in the name of a longtime Balenciaga employee - and a faded cat snap hidden behind the pocket coin.
The catwalk was a muddy track that splattered black dirt over the clothes on the catwalk and the purses in the front row, accompanied by a rumble of techno gunfire . Inspirational lifestyle moment, it wasn't.
It's fashion for the era of BeReal rather than Instagram. Just as a Chanel show is dazzled with pearls and camellias, Balenciaga's is strewn with real-life treasures: AirPods in the ears, a house key dangling from a ponytail, bags modeled on packages crispies grabbed in one hand. (There were even what looked like babies strapped to some of the models in slings, though these turned out to be dolls.)
Still, Balenciaga is always definitely in fashion. The oversized bomber slump is a streetwear update of the egg and cocoon shapes with which Cristóbal Balenciaga, the house's founder, radicalized Parisian fashion in his day, 70 years ago.
The emphasis on black is not just a nod to dystopia, but to the power of black to emphasize the exaggerated silhouettes that are a Balenciaga trademark from then and now.
You may have another surprise in store for Paris fashion week, with catwalk rumors for her own brand Yeezy, but no announcements yet. been made.
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